Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Super Dickmann]

Everything makes more sense if you consider that the writers both have almost total freedom to do whatever they want including whether they heed social media complaints or not, and that they hold a resentment for the foundations of Warcraft lore likely because they associate it with Afrasiabi and want to spite him as much as possible. It's how you get the current tone where everything is generally trying to be very kiddish and cozycore but some questlines wildly differ in tone because of zero communication between devs like how Midnight has one questline all but saying fel magic is totally illegal kill on sight in Silvermoon and another outright saying it's not illegal

Afrasiabi wrote the Sadfang Chronicles who were entirely about how the endgame of the Horde was the only leftover old orc character dying (after being inspired by a human) and effectively dissolving the Horde. There's no difference in endgame between Afrasiabi and those who came after him, only in pet characters (Saurfang vs. Sylvanas). Afrasiabi told you about the lack of negativity in the dojo.

[GeometryWizard]

Afrasiabi wrote the Sadfang Chronicles who were entirely about how the endgame of the Horde was the only leftover old orc character dying (after being inspired by a human) and effectively dissolving the core. There's no difference in endgame between Afrasiabi and those who came after him, only in pet characters (Saurfang vs. Sylvanas). Afrasiabi told you about the lack of negativity in the dojo.

I'm not even saying Afrasiabi's writing was great but it's impossible to know whatever the hell he thought about doing with SL and beyond because he got put on leave in 2019 for the sexual harassment. Danuser taking the story in the post-faction direction makes sense because he didn't even join until Legion where it was mostly neutral and then spent SL trying to rescue Sylvanas from the villainbat. Even then it's entirely a skill issue if Bfa broke the current writers so hard they are trying to totally rewrite a different IP on top of it ever since. It's already stupid and nonsensical how much they try to ignore it while dissolving the factions so the game can become World of Windrunners so bringing them back wouldn't be a big deal either but they don't want to go in that direction anymore

As people pointed out the way they handle Garrosh versus how they handle Sylvanas is very clear that they totally despise everything about the former and are going out of their way to make the latter into an unfairly hated girlboss

[Super Dickmann]

I'm not even saying Afrasiabi's writing was great but it's impossible to know whatever the hell he thought about doing with SL and beyond because he got put on leave in 2019 for the sexual harassment. Danuser taking the story in the post-faction direction makes sense because he didn't even join until Legion where it was mostly neutral and then spent SL trying to rescue Sylvanas from the villainbat. Even then it's entirely a skill issue if Bfa broke the current writers so hard they are trying to totally rewrite a different IP on top of it ever since. It's already stupid and nonsensical how much they try to ignore it while dissolving the factions so the game can become World of Windrunners so bringing them back wouldn't be a big deal either but they don't want to go in that direction anymore

As people pointed out the way they handle Garrosh versus how they handle Sylvanas is very clear that they totally despise everything about the former and are going out of their way to make the latter into an unfairly hated girlboss

Afrasiabi did take the story into the post-faction direction. He ran BFA, which had Sylvanas as the devil, had Jaina and Anduin as the source of all that was good and had his character, Saurfang, be inspired by them to end the factions. The entire story of the expansion hinges on this topic. Every plot beat is a lecture to that end. Danuser only inherited it and his only change when he did inherit it was that Sylvanas was a victim too.

He did so because of his own grievance with Kosak, who wrote Mists. Kosak wrote Mists with Garrosh as the villain instead of Sylvanas, as compared to Afrasiabi, who unlike Kosak/Danuser didn't have Sylvanas as his pet character. Hence the 'Stonetalon miscommunication' where the zone was written by Afrasiabi, self-admitted, and ended with Garrosh killing a guy for engaging with the faction war while praising Saurfang (something he never does before or since) as a total conflict as compared to later.

The only difference between Afrasiabi and Danuser in direction was that Afrasiabi wanted Sylvanas to be Satan to get back at Kosak and Danuser wanted Sylvanas to be a poor uwu victim.

[Joshuaj]

We still blaming 1 person for everyone's faults?

[GeometryWizard]

Afrasiabi did take the story into the post-faction direction. He ran BFA, which had Sylvanas as the devil, had Jaina and Anduin as the source of all that was good and had his character, Saurfang, be inspired by them to end the factions. The entire story of the expansion hinges on this topic. Every plot beat is a lecture to that end. Danuser only inherited it and his only change when he did inherit it was that Sylvanas was a victim too.

He did so because of his own grievance with Kosak, who wrote Mists. Kosak wrote Mists with Garrosh as the villain instead of Sylvanas, as compared to Afrasiabi, who unlike Kosak/Danuser didn't have Sylvanas as his pet character. Hence the 'Stonetalon miscommunication' where the zone was written by Afrasiabi, self-admitted, and ended with Garrosh killing a guy for engaging with the faction war as a total conflict as compared to later.

The only difference between Afrasiabi and Danuser in direction was that Afrasiabi wanted Sylvanas to be Satan to get back at Kosak and Danuser wanted Sylvanas to be a poor uwu victim.

But the post-faction stuff is only in hindsight because that's what we saw play out in DF and beyond. The whole faction war story was ended abruptly in 8.2.5 and really they stopped caring about it after 8.1 because they started pivoting to SL. It's easy to portray him as a giant peacenik like everyone else on the team right now because you can see DF and TWW and Midnight after but we didn't know what was going to come after SL just like how nobody was predicting an all-out faction war expac after Legion relegated it to half a zone and was otherwise all about teaming up and uniting

And regardless I'm talking about them boxing with his ghost exactly like how you describe Afrasiabi going after Kosak across two expansions after he left the team. It's why we were getting a storyline about desecrating Garrosh's grave over a decade after he died and over half a decade after Afrasiabi got terminated in the same expac that Arator bounces after his genocide-committing aunt like he's an excited little boy visiting his favorite auntie after school. Bfa being what it was along with the pivot to entirely neutral questing gave them the excuse to throw the Horde in the trash and since the Horde is so much more iconic to Warcraft's identity than the more generic Alliance it's what's enabled the fast tracking of the IP into being another generic fantasy clone where the good guy blonde characters tell you that ugly people can be good too and can even become a pet in their clubs

[Super Dickmann]

But the post-faction stuff is only in hindsight because that's what we saw play out in DF and beyond. The whole faction war story was ended abruptly in 8.2.5 and really they stopped caring about it after 8.1 because they started pivoting to SL. It's easy to portray him as a giant peacenik like everyone else on the team right now because you can see DF and TWW and Midnight after but we didn't know what was going to come after SL just like how nobody was predicting an all-out faction war expac after Legion relegated it to half a zone and was otherwise all about teaming up and uniting

And regardless I'm talking about them boxing with his ghost exactly like how you describe Afrasiabi going after Kosak across two expansions after he left the team. It's why we were getting a storyline about desecrating Garrosh's grave over a decade after he died and over half a decade after Afrasiabi got terminated in the same expac that Arator bounces after his genocide-committing aunt like he's an excited little boy visiting his favorite auntie after school. Bfa being what it was along with the pivot to entirely neutral questing gave them the excuse to throw the Horde in the trash and since the Horde is so much more iconic to Warcraft's identity than the more generic Alliance it's what's enabled the fast tracking of the IP into being another generic fantasy clone where the good guy blonde characters tell you that ugly people can be good too and can even become a pet in their clubs

I don't need to see SL and DF to make that case, because i already saw all of it in BFA, which was the biggest expression of it. BFA ended the factions, everything else just existed in the landscape it created. BFA had you team up with Jaina the patch right after she was a Horde raid boss based on a revelation you never saw to raid Orgrimmar and kill Horde characters who had a grievance with her.

In BFA, there was one character cast as all that is good - Anduin, who wanted the factions to end, one character who was cast as all that is bad - Sylvanas, who represented the continuing conflict. Afrasiabi, in every interview and every patch, heaped every prior conflict onto his chosen scapegoat and then produced cinematics, with Saurfang, his pet character since back in Cataclysm, going from passive and weak - when motivated by the Horde alone, to able to act when Anduin guided him. Afrasiabi wrote the bit where Saurfang goes on about how the Horde is rotten to the core and upon his death, has his body carried by the Alliance king to eulogize him in Orgrimmar. What followed BFA was the goal of BFA. The only grievance between the writing staff was how to do it, not the end. Danuser (appropriately) turned Sadfang into a trinket, but he didn't remove the endless diatribes about world peace and forgiveness, because up to that point he'd agreed. He just wanted Sylvanas to mouth them too.

Are they shadowboxing Afrasiabi? Only in the barest way, compared to what he did back with Kosak. The current (i.e this patch version of Sylvanas) is allowed to express character and dismiss terrible plot devices (Zelling et al) and not tear herself apart from taking part in the faction conflict (not bemoaning Teldrassil).

[Vakir]

Even if BFA was the precedent, I do think the actual presentation of everything has gotten softer and significantly worse. The values are the same but something about Midnight feels off. I can't place it because it isn't out, fully voiced, and complete in terms of launch story, but the signs are there.

As far as attempting to appeal to cozycore people, I think that the vibe surrounding housing, what with the subdued sounding tauren covered in flowers, doesn't need to be tonally enmeshed with the story or questing either.

As always, Blizzard is always trying to entice the audience they want rather than the one they already have, so maybe the kid gloves are an attempt in trying to court a wider audience and not turn them off with being dark. But it's misguided, because even people that would be seen as pearl-clutching zillenial Karens by the usual suspects of hate-watching on here are also off playing 40K and pre-slop Magic and non-mascot horror games. Like, nobody asked for D&D to be lighter and softer in terms of the artwork presentation, because the most popular actual plays and inspirations for many people to try out the game are pretty fucking violent, dark, and sexually explicit. I've never had someone at my table that wanted something light and soft predominantly, anecdotal as it may be.

The farm in Mists, the Plants vs. Zombies quest, the pet battles, etc. of past didn't bleed into the main conflict or setting. Something about Midnight definitely seems "off" even compared to TWW and DF, the biggest standouts being the voice acting and the main scenario's quality compared to the still-competent side stories. Eitrigg for example has always been the "good orc that isn't Thrall," yes, but I'd argue that placing mercy and peace as a directly verbalized value of his is making him a casualty the same way Thrall was around Cataclysm. You can be all strength and honor and do no harm but take no shit while also not wearing sanctimony on your sleeve.

[Super Dickmann]

The farm in Mists, the Plants vs. Zombies quest, the pet battles, etc. of past didn't bleed into the main conflict or setting. Something about Midnight definitely seems "off" even compared to TWW and DF, the biggest standouts being the voice acting and the main scenario's quality compared to the still-competent side stories. Eitrigg for example has always been the "good orc that isn't Thrall," yes, but I'd argue that placing mercy and peace as a directly verbalized value of his is making him a casualty the same way Thrall was around Cataclysm. You can be all strength and honor and do no harm but take no shit while also not wearing sanctimony on your sleeve.

BFA had every Horde leader circle into a wagon and tell you that Baine was 'the heart of the Horde'. BFA was the one that had the quest text itself narrate to you about how Calia had honor while her sole appearance was about friendship and that was so terrified of human emotion that the one time Anduin acted aggressively towards the guy who ended up bringing about his dad's death it was because an evil tentacle monster told him to do it. Eitrigg himself recruited the Mag'har (the only good sub-race faction filling an orc niche ever produced and a questline written by Danuser by the by) in one patch and then served as the developer mouthpiece calling you bad for not wanting to do SoO 2.0 by Anduin in the next patch. Every orifice of the story was dedicated to this lecture.

In turn, DF was the peak of Hearthstone-as-WoW content, more so than anything before or since. It's why 90% of worldbuilding was spent on food habits, everyone held hands and every second couple you saw were gay or lesbian and told you about how much they loved playing around and being nice. It is completely toothless and dull, but as everything has already been wiped for its convenience, little of it has any weight or impact. You can't neuter a eunuch after all.

Midnight is much the same. Its actual acknwledgement of differing heroic interests and basic social politics is the first time the game's done this since Legion (Bob and Turalyon, re: the blood elves and the Army) and as far as its worst story sins are concerned, most all of them are iterative - The Blood Elves being 'saved' from their present characterization by world peace dates back to TBC eliminating the race as it was in its only Horde-appropriate incarnation and Turalyon being militant as a result of spending a thousand years in space and his backstory being retconned is downstream and a vast improvement from him being an indecisive pussywipe who lets his wife run out with a voided set of bandages and lets demons join the Alliance. Is that stuff good? In order yes (the elf-paladin conflict), no (the Blood Elves becoming even more cosmopolitan) and yes (Turalyon actually having any kind of definable beliefs), but what it isn't is some slope down. BFA and SL were the nadir of lore up to this point and remain so. The keen hooker senses of social media personalities realizing something will become shit about five years after it has already done so don't change this.

[Vakir]

In terms of the actual intent and messaging, yeah, this has been going on.

But I mean that the actual tone and weight of it is another story. It feels so sucked out, DF excluded because, yeah, DF already was an expansion-length ad for Ambien. The voiceover, the writing of said dialogue, the pacing of the individual story beats, etc. are so vapid and seem, like I said, "off" in a way I can't really place.

Sadfang's story was bad, the direction of the character was bad, the outcome and fallout was especially bad, but the execution of it was good, and I don't mean the expensive CGI. Everyone is trying so damn hard to make this bad decision work. Running in with Thrall's axe they keep trying to make us care about and Shalamayne, splitting the latter to get a hit in, is heresy with context, but cool in isolation. The performances are pretty good. There's time given to it that's more than 2 minutes long, and the dialogue...pauses...are at the very least scaled back a bit when they don't have a reason. It's character assassination - albeit I'd argue him fucking off in Wrath after what he said to Garrosh was the original assassination - but Saurfang walking out at the start to known literal suicide is dark as hell. Honestly, I can't see a character, even a supporting one like Saurfang, dying convincingly in the current way it's handled.

"Boring?" would maybe be the word I'd use, but it's not fundamentally that as the primary factor, either. I don't know what it is, but it feels deeply phoned in of the same material, almost as if they realize it was a bad choice in BFA in the long run to embrace this direction, but they don't know how to pivot beyond surface level bullshit we know won't matter (Bob and Turalyon and the rest) so they are barely trying.

I always return back to WC3 - you can tell a story that generally ends a similar way without it sucking, and you can make the follow-up at least interesting enough to create tension, even if Vanilla was inconsistent and meandering in retrospect.

[Joshuaj]

I mean, its a lot easier to get people to screech when the gameplay design is inherently anti motivational psychology something we know a video game is not supposed to do and is instead supposed to use motivational psychology to keep you addicted and consuming. To be fair, there were so many myriad of reasons that Shadowlands collapsed not withstanding the negative sentiment that permeated everywhere on top of the fact Gameplay focus issues mean that the moment you login you face them and its a lot easier to ignore all of these direction, story and writing concerns because again you don't need to face them if you don't want to nor ever showcase an iota of interest in it.

I just do not really see even if every scene in The Last Titan is just in-game scenes akin to Tirions' death that people will be that angry in many ways I would personally just find that very funny and honestly I'm personally just trying to find the humor in all of this at this point cause it is at that point for me and the game is good so why not think of this in a different lense.



They're going to get that rookie number up, it is going to be fascinating to keep an eye on! I'm honestly kind of geeked out with how fun it will be considering the foundation of this Housing System and to then see where we end up with pushing everything to the limit and also in regards to optimization wise.

Just capped out the limit, and yeah I need an extra 25% increase. My side fences aren't complete yet LMAO

[Super Dickmann]

In terms of the actual intent and messaging, yeah, this has been going on.

But I mean that the actual tone and weight of it is another story. It feels so sucked out, DF excluded because, yeah, DF already was an expansion-length ad for Ambien. The voiceover, the writing of said dialogue, the pacing of the individual story beats, etc. are so vapid and seem, like I said, "off" in a way I can't really place.

Sadfang's story was bad, the direction of the character was bad, the outcome and fallout was especially bad, but the execution of it was good, and I don't mean the expensive CGI. Everyone is trying so damn hard to make this bad decision work. Running in with Thrall's axe they keep trying to make us care about and Shalamayne, splitting the latter to get a hit in, is heresy with context, but cool in isolation. The performances are pretty good. There's time given to it that's more than 2 minutes long, and the dialogue...pauses...are at the very least scaled back a bit when they don't have a reason. It's character assassination - albeit I'd argue him fucking off in Wrath after what he said to Garrosh was the original assassination - but Saurfang walking out at the start to known literal suicide is dark as hell. Honestly, I can't see a character, even a supporting one like Saurfang, dying convincingly in the current way it's handled.

"Boring?" would maybe be the word I'd use, but it's not fundamentally that as the primary factor, either. I don't know what it is, but it feels deeply phoned in of the same material, almost as if they realize it was a bad choice in BFA in the long run to embrace this direction, but they don't know how to pivot beyond surface level bullshit we know won't matter (Bob and Turalyon and the rest) so they are barely trying.

I always return back to WC3 - you can tell a story that generally ends a similar way without it sucking, and you can make the follow-up at least interesting enough to create tension, even if Vanilla was inconsistent and meandering in retrospect.

Every terrible gilblin line in Nazjatar had one of the recolored fish midgets tell you about how while the naga might have the presumed institutional momentum of ten thousand years of magocracy, empowered by an Old God, and helmed by an archmage, they had their friends, and that's what really counted. Then they gently nudged you into the SoO scenario which ended with Jaina sensually rubbing Thrall's arm when they considered world peace, conveniently excluding the night elves who's tree was actually torched in WC3 and who end the expansion taking a peace suppository. "Azshara might have her monsters, but we have our friends, and we'll stomp them flat."

It's not that it's been going on in a historical sense, it's that it already happened and was deliberately done way back then and even something as basic as Rommath and Umbric getting into a conflict about using the void or Alleria actually ending up turning evil for a bit is a level of nuance that the expansion that had you nailed to a chair and told about union membership dues by a tertiary NPC could never do. In Midnight, you fight Bob's forces (Rommath's guys in MGT), the Vanguard (Voidspire) and Alleria (Voidspire again). In BFA, your Horde experience is killing your own guys (twice) to save Jaina's brother and then Baine. The Alliance campaign ends with the cast crying that they have to actually fight another ship to the death. It's incomparable.

It's presentism, nothing else. It's the same reason why back in BFA people were waxing poetic about TBC, as if it itself wasn't the patient zero of many of the steps Mists and BFA implemented.

[Limayria]

In turn, DF was the peak of Hearthstone-as-WoW content, more so than anything before or since. It's why 90% of worldbuilding was spent on food habits, everyone held hands and every second couple you saw were gay or lesbian and told you about how much they loved playing around and being nice. It is completely toothless and dull, but as everything has already been wiped for its convenience, little of it has any weight or impact. You can't neuter a eunuch after all.

What does their actually being gay characters represented have to do with the tonal shift of Warcraft? Bg3 is consistently mentioned as a goal to strive for in regards to wows story and it has significantly more LGBT rep than the small hand full of one off gay characters in wow; especially when the only couples that had any meaningful focus in the game at all were straight couples (tyrande and malf, syndrogisa and Malygos in the blue dragonflight quest line)

[Super Dickmann]

What does their actually being gay characters represented have to do with the tonal shift of Warcraft? Bg3 is consistently mentioned as a goal to strive for in regards to wows story and it has significantly more LGBT rep than the small hand full of one off gay characters in wow; especially when the only couples that had any meaningful focus in the game at all were straight couples (tyrande and malf, syndrogisa and Malygos in the blue dragonflight quest line)

It's less BG3 and more Veilguard, to make the trite comparison. Both written by left-wing teams (attitude differences between the more puritan US and European left aside) but vastlly different in substance and quality. DF features friendly sexless gay couples because including them signals a certain set of politics, their function is foremost before any kind of character. To tell you the truth, I don't remember any of them and I don't think most anyone else does either. It's similar to how in SL, the choice to feature a transsexual character is done in the same faction wherein the loss of living identity in favor of becoming a uniform expression of a cosmic purpose is done. It doesn't dare characterize any of them in a meaningful sense, because by featuring them, they represent the whole of the given identity and if they have a bad trait, that means it can be extrapolated to said group at large. As you point out, Malygos and Sindragosa, despite both being dead, have a much better showing than any of them combined.

[Cheezits]

Now that Turalyon has been confirmed to not be villain-batted (for now) or retconned, and is actually sympathetic, the biggest MSQ (so not Arcantina bullshit lol) issue for people seems to be Arator being a generic woobie protag and stilted exposition dialog for noobs. I think the dislike for Midnight's writing is overblown other than people not getting over the main cast being more neutral/chill characters instead of 9 Garroshes.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

Voidstorm is a legitimate nightmare decisionmaking, they slammed everything into it and just went "Okay, this is Midnight now come back in 12.2 and assume we got some capability of delivering something exciting". Xal'atath is continuously mysterious with everyone questioning and begging for clarity on her character which may seemingly not happen during the duration of this expansion and again I think one of the key issues I have with the delaying of it implies that Aman'thuls character is going to be beyond cooked.

I genuinely think people underestimate how bad the Voidstorm decision is when you consider how confident everyone was in regards to Midnights concept. I think people need to recognize that they don't really have control nor is it likely that TLT which is a kaleidoscopic "shove everything into it" expansion can in any way shape or form function at all.

Like if we're struggling here, oh boy are we going to struggle in The Last Titan.

[Super Dickmann]

Now that Turalyon has been confirmed to not be villain-batted (for now) or retconned, and is actually sympathetic, the biggest MSQ (so not Arcantina bullshit lol) issue for people seems to be Arator being a generic woobie protag and stilted exposition dialog for noobs. I think the dislike for Midnight's writing is overblown other than people not getting over the main cast being more neutral/chill characters instead of 9 Garroshes.

The Turalyon discourse has been some of the dumbest stuff to come out of this, but its main thing is a symptom of chronic bad writing in WoW in general. Legion Turalyon is a terribly written character - he's the human leader of a race and force that's 25 times as old at him at earliest, stuck in a total war for a thousand years, yet is still milquetoast and vascillating. He doesn't care about a demon killing the archangel he's followed so long two seconds after the deed is done. Despite being cosmically infused with divine power, he has no strong feelings about his wife running off to follow the exact opposite. He most definitely shows nothing of the characterization of Tides of Darkness that people pretend to be up in arms about now. Yet, now, when the game actually brings up 90% of these things and has him actually exhibit conviction, human emotion and involvement, now there's uproar that he doesn't correspond to a characterization that was terrible and out of place in the first place. It's similar to how TBC Blood Elf writing, some of the most damaging race writing in the entire history of the game by far, is now being defended from its own expression in Midnight.

Time means that bad writing is gradually grandfathered in and ends up being defended by the same people who in all other cases would rightly give it shit.

@Foreign Exchange Ztudent

As you've been told a million times, there is no obfuscation regarding Xal'atath's character and even less some hankering to reveal a mystery box. When introduced she tells you in the intro that she's a representative of the Void and wants to eat the world soul. Now, two years later, she opens a big void hole to go after the world soul. She's completely straightforward. There is no twist. She's evil and wants to do the thing she's said she wants to do since Legion (only one would remain to consume the world).

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

As you've been told a million times, there is no obfuscation regarding Xal'atath's character and even less some hankering to reveal a mystery box. When introduced she tells you in the intro that she's a representative of the Void and wants to eat the world soul. Now, two years later, she opens a big void hole to go after the world soul. She's completely straightforward.

Its' not really a character though is it? We're literally just repeating Zovaal at that point. Its' very much not really worth even arguing about this since its' literally showcasing failure of learning by the Team.

Again, you can do this song and dance as much as you want. Its' not a character at that point its' a mystery box being taken to a final destination in which the outcome is usually poor historically in this franchise unless they abruptly decide to terminate it in Midnight.

[Merryck]

Voidstorm is a legitimate nightmare decisionmaking, they slammed everything into it and just went "Okay, this is Midnight now come back in 12.2 and assume we got some capability of delivering something exciting". Xal'atath is continuously mysterious with everyone questioning and begging for clarity on her character which may seemingly not happen during the duration of this expansion and again I think one of the key issues I have with the delaying of it implies that Aman'thuls character is going to be beyond cooked.

I genuinely think people underestimate how bad the Voidstorm decision is when you consider how confident everyone was in regards to Midnights concept. I think people need to recognize that they don't really have control nor is it likely that TLT which is a kaleidoscopic "shove everything into it" expansion can in any way shape or form function at all.

Like if we're struggling here, oh boy are we going to struggle in The Last Titan.

What Voidstorm decision are we talking about?

[Super Dickmann]

Its' not really a character though is it? We're literally just repeating Zovaal at that point. Its' very much not really worth even arguing about this since its' literally showcasing failure of learning by the Team.

Again, you can do this song and dance as much as you want. Its' not a character at that point its' a mystery box being taken to a final destination in which the outcome is usually poor historically in this franchise unless they abruptly decide to terminate it in Midnight.

How is it a mystery box when the product is upfront? Zovaal was a mystery box because what he was aiming to do and why and who he even was was unexplained until literally the last cutscene of his own expansion, which also didn't explain shit, mind. He didn't even exist before it. 'Remake reality' 'What is to come' and so on.

Xal, on the other hand is extremely transparent, she's six expansions old now and completely congruent from start to finish. Since BFA she is meant to be a sexy evil elf lady with a dark power who wants to destroy the thing we're meeant to defend over the expansion. Instead of staying in the background like the Bald Man always one step ahead in some vague plan, her plan is clear from the beginning and she takes setbacks and wins throughout it over the story.

You can argue she's not very deep - and she isn't, or that she's by no means the best antagonist of the franchise - far from it, Gul'dan, Garrosh, WC3 Arthas, etc. But what she isn't is a repeat of the Bald Man in either function or form.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

What Voidstorm decision are we talking about?

It reroutes the core concepts and storylines of the expansion to a zone which ultimately is the reason for the outcomes in the final raid of the Base expansion and which ultimately ends the base concept of the expansion.

Again, I do not find it impressive but considering how hard we're struggling at this point it may be this was the only thing they could do at this point in time. I find it pretty cynical because it showcases that all recognition of the potentiality of the concept has gone out the window and when you consider The Last Titan that issue becomes far far worse in that expansion considering how much is proposed to be in it if you just take a sheet of paper and start writing down everything.